by Donna.

Way back in 2009 my friend Elizabeth shared this recipe with me.  Her husband had recently gone completely gluten free, and this was the first gluten free bread she had made and it quickly became a favourite in her house.

Since my husband went gluten free in March I hadn’t dared to try baking gluten free bread.  I was scared about the flavours of the flours, the texture, the lack of kneading.  But not having bread around means a loss of an instant convenience food, especially at breakfast.

Recently Elizabeth started writing her own blog and she recently published her recipe – the same that she shared as a guest contribution on the precursor to my blog  ”way back then”.  It inspired me to *finally* try it out.  I am glad that I did.  And I am pleased to share it with #52bakes.

Ingredients

1/2 cup olive oil or butter (I made with olive oil but will try with butter next time)
1/3 cup water
1/3 cup milk or soy milk (I use regular milk in mine, I am sure that rice or oat milk would also work if you are so inclined)
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups tapioca flour (plus a 1/4 cup more to make the dough dryer especially when using oil)
2 cloves of garlic, minced
2/3 cup freshly grated Parmesan cheese (Elizabeth suggests manchego is also a good cheese to use – nice, hard, salty and yummy)
2 beaten eggs

Instructions

1.  Preheat oven to 375 degrees F (190 degrees C).
2.  Pour olive oil, water, milk, and salt into a large saucepan, and place over high heat. When the mixture comes to a boil, remove from heat immediately, and stir in tapioca flour and garlic until smooth. Set aside to rest for 10 to 15 minutes.
3.  Stir the cheese and egg into the tapioca mixture until well combined, the mixture will be chunky like cottage cheese. (Add extra flour here)
4.  Drop rounded, 1/4 cup-sized balls of the mixture onto an ungreased baking sheet.
5.  Bake in preheated oven until the tops are lightly browned, 15 to 20 minutes.  (I find you want to go on the longer side so it’s not gooey in the middle)

Elizabeth suggests that you can make these larger like biscuits or scones, and says that they are great with eggs for breakfast.  We had ours for dinner with pasta (who doesn’t like cheesy garlic bread with pasta?!) and we also had these in our pockets for a savoury snack on a long bicycle ride.  Tapioca flour or starch is available at most health or whole foods shops.  Even if you are not gluten free these are delicious and worth finding the flour and making!

I made this cake over the long holiday weekend we had to celebrate the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in the UK, at the beginning of June. It was my first attempt at this cake and it was so good. It is a surprisingly versatile cake; equally good warm with the strawberry syrup as it was plain and cold standing on Ridgeway halfway through a walk.

It is a recipe given in “food intolerance management plan” by Dr Sue Shepherd and Dr Peter Gibson. Dr Shepherd, although she doesn’t know it, has changed my life. This is a wheat free cake that you can make gluten free by using gluten-free baking powder. The next time I make this I might try it with lemon instead of lime; I adore lemons and always have done.

Ingredients
Springform tin (20cm) greased and lined with baking parchment

Cake
5 egg yolks (I froze the whites for making meringue at a later date)
2 large eggs
220g caster sugar
120g ground almonds
90g rice flour
75g polenta
2 teaspoons of baking powder
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
Grated zest of 2 limes
150g unsalted butter, melted and cooled

Syrup
Grated zest and juice of 1 lime
120g caster sugar
250g strawberries hulled and thickly sliced
125 ml water
Instructions
For the cake:

• Preheat the oven to 160˚C.
• Beat the egg yolks, eggs and sugar until thick and pale. Stir in the vanilla and lime zest.
• Combine the ground almonds, rice flour, polenta and baking powder in a bowl.
• Fold into the egg mixture with a metal spoon.
• Add the melted butter and stir until combined.
• Pour the mixture into the cake tin and bake for 45-55 minutes or until a skewer inserted into the centre comes out clean. Cover with foil halfway through to stop the cake going too brown.
• Remove from the oven and allow to cool in the tin for 10 minutes before transferring to wire rack.

Cooling lime polenta cake

For the syrup:

• Put the lime zest and juice, sugar and water into a saucepan and stir over a medium heat until the sugar has dissolved.
• Bring to the boil, reduce the heat to low and add the strawberries.
• Simmer gently until the syrup has thickened and the strawberries softened.  The recipe says this takes 10-15 minutes, it took a lot longer when I did it but I did not have good strawberries. They were a little under ripe.

Lime polenta cake with strawberry syrup